Bobby Scott

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the ranking member of the committee, the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers].

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, may I inquire how much time I have remaining?

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, this amendment simply requires that we under this chapter to determine whether or not the billions of dollars authorized under this bill, plus the hundreds of billions of dollars the prison grants program will encourage the States to spend, whether or not those expenditures actually reduce crime. Mr. Chairman, I will submit a similar provision to evaluate programs funded under the Police and Prevention Block Grant when we take up H.R. 728. The amendment will set aside one-tenth of 1 percent for research and evaluation of the effectiveness of expenditures under the bill for crime reduction. Mr. Chairman, this amendment assures that we will try to add not only truth-in-sentencing, but also truth in legislating, as we approach the attack on crime. We need to know whether or not the expenditures are actually having an effect. Mr. Chairman, we have seen programs evaluated, like drug courts, that cost about one-twentieth of other initiatives and have an 80 percent reduction in crime. We have seen studies of Head Start, Job Corps and other primary prevention programs that save more money than they cost and reduce crime. We have even seen recreational programs studied, and significant reduction of crimes are found. Mr. Chairman, according to the National Academy of Sciences, in various studies of potential years of life lost, violence prevention gets a small portion of the research. We spend $441 for heart, lung, and blood research for each potential year of life lost, $697 for AIDS research, $794 for each potential year of life lost for cancer, but only $31 for each potential year of life lost in research for violence. Mr. Chairman, we should invest one-tenth of 1 percent of the funds under this bill to see whether we have wasted our money or whether the money could have been allocated better. Five years from now after we have spent $30 billion, we would then be considering spending another $30 billion or more, it would be nice to know what parts of the $30 billion actually had the effect of reducing crime and what part of the $30 billion had no effect at all. This minuscule investment can give us the answers, and therefore I hope the House will adopt the amendment. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment, amendment number 8.

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, for the money we are--if we are going to put money into prisons, the Schumer amendment will put the money into prisons. The underlying bill; we do not know what is going to happen or who qualifies. Furthermore, Mr. Chairman, the 85 percent rule has been referred to as truth-in-sentencing. It is actually half truth in sentencing. It is true that people cannot be let out early, but under the whole truth in sentencing we have to acknowledge that we cannot hold people longer. The gentleman that was described from Wisconsin that had all the numbers of years and would be eligible for parole, well, he could be denied parole and held for a long time. In Virginia, we went to the 85 percent rule, and to do that we had to reduce the sentence by 50 percent. It cost $7 billion, and, to put that number in perspective, Mr. Chairman, on a national basis we are about 2 or 2\1/2\ percent of the national population. That would translate to $250 and $300 billion to get to the 85 percent rule even after we have reduced the sentences 50 percent. Mr. Chairman, with parole a person with the 10 year sentence, that puts the numbers in perspective. A person with a 10-year sentence would serve anywhere between 2 and 10 years. Mr. Chairman, those with a 10-year sentence, to put some numbers in perspective under the present law in Virginia--under the previous law in Virginia, would serve between 2 and 10 years. Those that got out in 2 were not randomly released. They had gotten education and job training. They have a home to go back to. They have a job waiting for them. They would get out early. Those with no job, no job training, nowhere to go, those that would say they want to go out and commit more crimes, they would serve longer. Mr. Chairman, under the so-called truth-in-sentencing or the half truth in sentencing, those with the longer sentences, those who have actually served the 10 years, would not be getting out in 5 years. Why should we dictate to the States a situation where there will actually be serving--the worst will be serving less time, and those least at risk will be serving significantly more time? Mr. Chairman, the half truth in sentencing eliminates the ability for States to use their prison space effectively by reserving it for those that are really truly dangerous, relieving the flexibility of letting those out early who are less risk. We need the whole truth in sentencing, so those who are seriously at risk can serve the full sentence without the reduction of one half, as we have in Virginia. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that we would adopt this amendment for the money that we are going to spend, for prisons, to go to prisons across the board, not so that States can reduce the amount of time that the most dangerous criminals are serving.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. I yield to the gentleman from North Carolina.

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, as I understand the amendment, and the gentleman from North Carolina [Mr. Watt] can correct me if I am wrong, this is for people who are alleging that they are innocent and they are asking for an opportunity to be heard, and they have evidence that would show that they will probably be found not guilty if the evidence were to be heard. It seems to me that we have an unfortunate situation in that we have to have the same procedure for those that are in fact guilty and those that are in fact innocent, and we do not know until they are heard which category they fit in. So we have to have one procedure. So we are going to have the procedure for people that are innocent, and the gentleman's amendment would allow the person that is innocent to be heard.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, this bill will streamline the procedure by which victims can get restitution. Victims already have the right to sue and could go into civil court, but since everybody is right here in court to begin with, they can get the restitution that they deserve. There is one problem. It does not provide extra money for the judges and the probation officers for the extra work they will do. However, on the whole, it will allow victims to get more justice while they are in court. However, Mr. Chairman, I would believe that victims would appreciate more of a focus on preventing the crimes to begin with than what to do after they have been victimized. This bill focuses on what happens after the people have already been victimized. We are, in other crime bills, taking money away from prevention and police officers that could have prevented their crime to begin with. Hopefully, Mr. Chairman, we will restore some of that money to crime prevention and community police officers. In the meanwhile, I guess we have to deal with the fact that victims will be out there victimized because we did not have the foresight to prevent the crimes before they occurred.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I think we need to go back to exactly what we are talking about. What we are talking about in this discussion is illegal searches. Legal searches are not affected by this legislation. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, said the fourth amendment protects an individual's legitimate expectation to privacy. ``The right to be let alone, the most comprehensive right and the most valued by civilized men.'' The fourth amendment, Mr. Chairman, allows the State to breach an individual's right to privacy only when the amendment's rules are followed. The purpose of the exclusionary rule is to protect innocent people from illegal searches, because it removes all incentives the police officer may have to conduct illegal searches. If an officer conducts illegal searches, a search of innocent people, those for whom he has no probably cause that there is evidence of a crime, if he conducts illegal searches, he could not use the evidence anyway if he happened to find some evidence. So police officers do not conduct illegal searches. This bill would remove the incentive to obey the law and gives the incentive to police officers to break the law, because if they break the law in good faith, then they can still use the evidence. faith. I believe that the officers who beat Rodney King were acting in good faith. If they act in good faith, they act in good faith when they develop racial profiles to target certain ethnic groups for arrests. For example, there is the drug courier profile. If you have a black or Hispanic young male driving a Florida rental car up Interstate 95, they are targeted for arrest. Those kinds of profiles ought to be illegal. If the police find something in an illegal arrest, they can always come up with an excuse for the search. The exclusionary rule removes the incentive for illegal searches. It protects innocent people from those searches. It is the exclusionary rule that first causes complications, but now is being complied with. We should not dilute the Constitution. We should uphold the Constitution. We should not encourage police misconduct.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I yield to the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Conyers].

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, the proposed Conyers amendment seeks to codify the 1984 Supreme Court decision in United States versus Leon, where the Court held that the exclusionary rule should not be used to bar evidence gathered by officers acting in a reasonable reliance on a search warrant issued by a magistrate but ultimately found to be improper. Although this amendment in and of itself dilutes the exclusionary rule, I support it for it does far less damage to fourth amendment rights than the bill before us and does not go further than what is already current Supreme Court case law. On the other hand, Mr. Chairman, the underlying bill is a radical departure from established precedent and would radically extend the permissibility of warrantless searches. It would allow evidence gathered from warrantless searches to be admitted. Indeed, the Leon court explicitly states that it strongly prefers searches with warrants to warrantless searches, because the process of obtaining a warrant, that process by itself provides safeguards against improper searches. Mr. Chairman, the fourth amendment allows the State to breach the individual's right to privacy only when the amendment's rules are followed. As Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes said, the fourth amendment protects the individual's legitimate expectation of privacy--``the right to be let alone--the most comprehensive right and the right most valued by civilized man.'' The heart of the fourth amendment is the issuance of a warrant based on probable cause. In obtaining a warrant the police officer goes before a magistrate and shows that the totality of the circumstances indicate that there is evidence of a crime, in effect, that he has probable cause. The cost of conducting constitutional searches is not high. The process of obtaining a warrant is not cumbersome for police. It has been shown that a magistrate will take an average of 2 minutes and 45 seconds to approve a search warrant. The vast majority--over 90 percent--of warrant applications are approved. Police officers can even obtain a warrant over the telephone. Critics of the exclusionary rule exaggerate its practical significance in the disposition of cases. They talk vaguely of enormous numbers of criminals walking because evidence either was or probably will be excluded. This argument is simply not supported by responsible statistical studies. Adherence to the fourth amendment and use of the exclusionary rule does not result in large numbers of criminals being set free. For example, a study by the Comptroller General's office found that suppression motions were granted in only 1.3 percent of Federal cases. The leading commentator on search and seizure law has found that, . . . the most careful and balanced assessment of all available empirical evidence shows that . . . the cumulative loss in felony cases because of prosecutor screening, police releases and court dismissals attributable to the acquisition of evidence in violation of the Fourth Amendment is from 0.6% to 2.35%. (W. LaFave, ``The Seductive Call of Expedience: U.S. v. Leon, Its Rationale and Ramifications,'', 1984 Ill. L. Rev. 895, 913. Historically, searches without warrants were judged unreasonable and illegal. Only under certain tightly defined circumstances were warrantless searches considered legal. Today, the basic rule holds. Warrantless searches are allowed only in the unusual circumstances, as the ranking Member, Mr. Conyers, has indicated. Mr. Chairman, H.R. 66 would allow so called good faith warrantless searches. This would mean the demise of the warrant process, and its attendant protection. Instead of a warrant issued upon probable cause, we would have good faith. The bill would mean that good police practice would be discouraged. It would be unnecessary for police officers to prepare an affidavit requesting a warrant from a neutral magistrate. The determination of whether probable cause exists would no longer be made before the search, as I believe is consistent with the letter and spirit of the fourth amendment. There would be after-the-fact determination of whether or not the police officers acted in so-called good faith. There is no substitute, Mr. Chairman, for the fourth amendment. We know police officers will always be able to make up after-the-fact excuses for the search. The fourth amendment protects the innocent public from illegal searches. Police should not conduct illegal searches, they should not conduct illegal arrests. The exclusionary rule removes the incentives that they would have for such law breaking. In summary, Mr. Chairman, the Conyers amendment maintains a balance to protect innocent people from illegal searches, and I urge the House to adopt it.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from California [Ms. Woolsey] for her hard work and leadership on welfare reform and child support enforcement in particular. Mr. Speaker, we all recognize that a child deserves the emotional support of both parents. Today, with close to 6 million children living in poverty, it is clear that children are in desperate need of financial support from both parents. The discussion on children in single-parent families has been primarily focused on welfare reform, specifically Aid to Families with Dependent Children. However, the issue of child support enforcement has curiously been absent in most of the discussion on family preservation and family support. It has been reported that there is over $34 billion in uncollected child support payments. In fact, child support orders are established in only about half of children--for half of children who should receive them. And even for those who have support orders, only have receive the full payment. According to the Children's Defense Fund, The vast majority of children served by state child support enforcement agencies not only do not have full collections made on their behalf, but fail to have any collection made at all. An estimated $7.4 billion of uncollected child support should go to poor children. In many, many cases, it is the lack of child support that forces families to go on to welfare to begin with. payment and even a minimum wage job coupled with earned income tax credit and food stamps, that together could put a family on to the path of self-sufficiency. If we address the support services such as child care, health care, and transportation through welfare reform, the family can be self-sufficient. This has all the components of a plan that accomplishes the goal of lifting families out of poverty: work and responsibility. In my State of Virginia, Mr. Speaker, we have implemented a strategy to aggressively go after noncustodial parents who choose to ignore their financial responsibility to their children. We have created a system to increase paternity establishment including providing in- hospital paternity acknowledgment, and we have decided that establishment of support orders will be a priority. Virginia is now considered a national model for this system of paternity establishment, and we have collected over $230 million in child support, including $40 million which was collected on behalf of children in AFDC families. Much of the uncollected support involved out-of-State parents, so the need for a national cooperation is obvious. For some families, the receipt of a steady support payment is enough to lift children out of poverty or prevent them from needing AFDC benefits. A new initiative called: A child support assurance system accomplishes this task. Child support assurance guarantees a fixed amount of child support for each child as long as a child support order is in place. Whatever the noncustodial parents pays goes toward that guarantee, so if the parent pays all of what is owed, there is only a little administrative expense. If only part is paid, the cost of the guarantee is probably less than AFDC would have been anyway. Child support assurance removes the work disincentives that we so often hear about from welfare recipients. In a child support assurance system, the family receives the entire guarantee and does not have to worry about a reduction in their take home pay if they work. For example with a $250 guarantee, if you stay at home you receive $250. But if you work part time, make $300 a month you still get the entire $250 plus your earnings. If you work full time, you still get the entire $250 and get to keep your earnings. In fact, when you add in the earned income tax credit and the monthly child support assurance payment, work will always pay. Child support assurance demonstrations report that recipients are able to increase their work hours by 25 percent and increase their earnings by 25 percent. Without the child support assurance, many families will probably turn to welfare as a means of support. Clearly, programs designed to lift children out of poverty must acknowledge that both parents have an obligation to support their children. Child support systems formalize this arrangement--when we aggressively pursue the noncustodial parent. A system of child support assurance not only recognizes the importance of this arrangement, but makes it easier for families to find their own way on the path to self- sufficiency. As we consider welfare reform, Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, we must consider child support enforcement and innovations such as child support assurance. We can lift more families out of poverty and fulfill our goal of encouraging work and responsibility.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I rise today to state my opposition to the Barton amendment. Mr. Chairman, if you actually read the bill rather than read the title, you will find that the amendment does not require a balanced budget. It only requires a three-fifths vote to pass an unbalanced budget. It requires nothing before the year 2002. So since there is no plan and since the sponsors propose no plan to get to a balanced budget, we can assume, based on the testimony, that unless you are going to cut Social Security, you are not going to have a balanced budget. If we use our past experience to guide us, we can find that Congress is unwilling to make the tough, necessary cuts to bring the deficit down, but we have been very willing to add pork to a budget to get the extra votes needed to pass it. Mr. Chairman, if we actually look at that history, we will see that the three-fifths vote may make it more difficult to pass an unbalanced budget, but it is also going to make it more difficult to pass a budget with a lower deficit, so either you are faced with no budget at all or a budget with a higher deficit. Therefore, Mr. Chairman, this should be called the pork protection plan rather than the balanced budget amendment. Simply put, it will allow a minority of Members in either the House or the Senate to hold out for the spending projects in their district. The way you reduce the deficit, Mr. Chairman, is the tough decisions. Making the tough decisions ought to require only a majority of the vote, because we have seen no evidence that we can get a majority of the Members to step up to the plate to make those spending cuts. Mr. Chairman, if the Barton amendment passes, we will find we will need a three-fifths vote to pass a budget only, and the only way to do that is to pork it up to make sure we can get the requisite votes. Mr. Chairman, I would hope that the Barton amendment would fail.

Mr. SCOTT

Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the requisite number of words. Mr. Chairman, I rise in support of the Owens amendment to exempt from the impact of the unfunded mandates legislation any provisions designed to maintain the health of individuals with disabilities. This is not only the compassionate thing to do, it is also the sensible and fiscal thing to do. As a direct result of the advancement in medicine, many individuals with disabilities are able to maintain an independent life as productive, contributing citizens. The absence of medical care for such individuals is, therefore, not simply a health problem but one of loss of general functionality as well. To take away health care for most of us means that we have to prioritize resources. For individuals with disabilities, there are no other priorities. They must have health care for anything else to exist. Moreover, it also means that we will have to pay a lot more for other support costs once the independence of an individual with disabilities is lost. What this amendment says, Mr. Chairman, is that we should not treat individuals in totally different circumstances as if they were the same. Without this amendment, individuals with disabilities would be dramatically affected. As the gentleman from New York has indicated, Congress has passed many bills affecting the rights and independence of individuals with disabilities and without this amendment, it would be virtually impossible for Congress to take any action to protect this vulnerable group in the future.

Mr. SCOTT. I yield to the gentleman from New York.